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CHAPTER LXXXV . “ Then went the jury out whose names were Mr . Blindman , Mr . No - good , Mr . Malice , Mr . Love - lust , Mr . Live - loose , Mr . Heady , Mr . High - mind , Mr . Enmity , Mr . Liar , Mr . Cruelty , Mr . Hate - light , Mr . Implacable , who every one gave in his private verdict against him among themselves , and afterwards unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the judge . And first among themselves , Mr . Blindman , the foreman , said , I see clearly that this man is a heretic . Then said Mr . No - good , Away with such a fellow from the earth ! Ay , said Mr . Malice , for I hate the very look of him . Then said Mr . Love - lust , I could never endure him . Nor I , said Mr . Live - loose ; for he would be always condemning my way . Hang him , hang him , said Mr . Heady . A sorry scrub , said Mr . High - mind . My heart riseth against him , said Mr . Enmity . He is a rogue , said Mr . Liar . Hanging is too good for him , said Mr . Cruelty . Let us despatch him out of the way said Mr . Hate - light . Then said Mr . Implacable , Might I have all the world given me , I could not be reconciled to him ; therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death . ” — Pilgrim’s Progress . When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions bringing in their verdict of guilty , who pities Faithful ? That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained , to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd — to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us . The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate — who knows that he is stoned , not for professing the Right , but for not being the man he professed to be . This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch , and going to end his stricken life in that sad refuge , the indifference of new faces . The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one dread , but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy . His equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to , yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full confession to his wife : the acts which he had washed and diluted with inward argument and motive , and for which it seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon — what name would she call them by ? That she should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear . He felt shrouded by her doubt : he got strength to face her from the sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him . Some time , perhaps — when he was dying — he would tell her all : in the deep shadow of that time , when she held his hand in the gathering darkness , she might listen without recoiling from his touch . Perhaps : but concealment had been the habit of his life , and the impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a deeper humiliation .
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